A known mobile equipment or mobile telephone generally includes a display and a keyboard intended to support interaction with a user. With reference to FIG. 1, an example known mobile telephone is schematically depicted with a display showing a menu. The menu comprises a plurality of entries (Entry 1, Entry 2 . . . Entry n) being displayed. When a user selects an entry from the menu, a corresponding service is executed.
Based upon the choice of the mobile telephone manufacturer, the mobile telephone provides the service and the menu with the corresponding entry. For example, taking into consideration first and second mobile telephones, a service of writing an Short Message Service (SMS) is reached according to a different selection of entries on corresponding menus on the first and the second mobile telephones. Additional to the services provided by the mobile telephone, one or more additional services may be supported by an IC Card hosted inside the mobile telephone.
More particularly, a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) toolkit applet is a specific application intended to be stored and executed on an IC Card in order to provide an additional service. The additional service is initialized by the mobile telephone hosting the IC Card, for example, through its keyboard. More particularly, one or more entries inside the menu of the mobile telephone, for example, the entry “Entry N” (FIG. 1), provide access to the additional services.
Generally, such additional services are recalled by a submenu comprising a plurality of application entries (App. Entry 1, App. Entry 2 . . . App. Entry n) so that the one or more entries inside the menu of the mobile telephone provide access to the submenu, and the submenu manages the access to the additional services through the application entries.
In FIG. 1, the recall of the submenu is executed by a selection of the entry “Entry n” of the menu of the mobile telephone. In this way, a plurality of additional services, being provided by corresponding SIM toolkit applets, are called by an application entry inside the submenu after browsing the menu of the mobile telephone to reach the entry corresponding to the submenu recall. Currently, there is no standard relative location inside the menu for an entry dedicated to recalling the submenu of the additional entries. Accordingly, an additional service furnished by the SIM Toolkit applet is reached according to a different sequence of menu choices on the mobile telephone, depending on the model of the mobile telephone that hosts the IC Card.
When such a sequence of menu choices on the mobile telephone keyboard is not user-friendly, for example, because the entry for accessing the submenu is severely nested, the access to the additional service is unpractical for the user. To address such a limitation, some telecom operators provide a hardware approach based on a special button on the mobile telephone keyboard in order to directly access the submenu. The hardware approach depends on the mobile telephone manufacturer and is not portable.
Due to the prior art drawbacks, there is need for a method for selecting one or more additional services provided by an IC Card to a mobile telephone that hosts the IC Card while avoiding the selection of a specific sequence of menu choices in the mobile telephone. Moreover, at the same time, there is need for a method that may provide direct and immediate access to the additional services independent of the hardware of the mobile telephone and may provide an approach to the limitations currently bounding the recall of additional services provided by IC Cards.